What people got to understand is that it’s a loose process. It’s not a primary run by the state govt. There are no official procedures other than the permanent precinct chair and secretary are in charge of the process in their precinct and the votes must be tallied.
Some counties use ballots, some don’t, just blank slips of paper. There’s no ballot custody, counting or observer codes. The numbers are called into the state, and this time there were test counties who inputted them by computer.
It’s basically a trust system. There are over 1700 precincts and anywhere from 1 to numerous meeting sites in each county. I would suspect that most people are honest but there’s also no mandated oversight either beyond the precinct chair. So unless a particular site and precinct uses good procedures mistakes could be made and someone could game the system.
With a six figure number votes it would take quite a bit of gaming across the state to do any significant boosting of a candidate, though with something this close obviously it could make a difference. Even so it would take blind luck to guess ahead of time both that your guy would have a shot at first place and the election be close.
The only way to do it is if you were one of the very last counties to report, and the person reporting was aware of the statewide count, and then deliberately reporting the wrong numbers, and no one else observed the discrepancy. It maybe could be done without raising flags but I don’t think one person could do it alone very easily.
[It’s basically a trust system.]
Problem, trust systems are generally overun and controlled by those evil people who lust after power and its ally, money.